Sunday, June 10, 2012

ANOTHER KIND OF HARVEST

ANOTHER KIND OF HARVEST: THE REMARKABLE VEGETABLES OF JOSE' CARMEN GARCIA

Jose Carmen Garcia Martinez is a
49-year-old farmer, one of hundreds who eke out a meager livelihood by
tilling the granite-like soil of the state of Guanajuato, Mexico, some
260 miles northwest of Mexico City.

Like his neighbors, Garcia
hitches a pair of mules to his plow each autumn and prepares seedbed
furrows on his three-acre plot. Then he plants seeds he has purchased
at the community store.

This store (it should be noted) also
supplies seeds to Garcia's neighbors - identical seeds. All have been
shipped from Texas in burlap bags. No seeds planted by Garcia differ
from seeds sown by the other farmers of Guanajuato.

The products
which grow from Jose's seeds are quite another matter. Each spring
after the harvest, Garcia again hooks up his mules and heads for the
local marketplace, where he instantly becomes the focal point of
excitement that has begun to spread through Mexico and promises to reach
around the world.

A crowd draws around as Garcia starts to
unload his wagon. Onions weighing eight pounds each, and more, draw
gasps of admiration from the onlookers. There are huge cabbages 60
pounds each with some even larger, and collard greens five feet long
bearing leaves more than two feet wide. These king-sized super
vegetables quickly find their way into the wagons of shoppers, who rush
to buy out Jose's vegetables as fast as he can unload them.

Thirty-two
years have passed since Garcia first astounded the people of Guanajuato
by marketing his gargantuan produce. Despite their bulk, his
vegetables are as tender and tasty as any of conventional size. Many of
Jose's customers assert they not only go farther, but taste better than
any others.

Other farmers ask how it can be that Jose Carmen
Garcia buys seeds where they buy theirs, plants them and harvest his
crops exactly as they do in soil no different than theirs, yet grows
vegetables of magnificent proportions, the likes of which are found
nowhere else on earth.

I asked those questions of Garcia myself
when I met him for the first time in April 1976. I also saw his giant
vegetables and tasted them - and was greatly taken by their flavor and
tenderness. What Garcia told me, he has told other people. The story
has subsequently been published in Mexican newspapers and magazines.

Garcia
told me that in 1947, when he was seventeen years old, he was plowing
one fall afternoon when he met a stranger, although everyone, quite
literally, knew everyone else in Garcia's farm community. However, the
trespasser was invited by Jose to eat and drink.

Warmed by
homemade sweetbreads and coffee, the stranger soon unfolded a story
which stirred Garcia's youthful imagination and was to have a major
impact on his life.

Jose sat spellbound as his mysterious guest
told how he had been captured by a band of strange beings and held for a
number of days in a long, spacious tunnel beneath one of the many
inactive volcanoes surrounding the area.

His captors were described
as humanoids - tall and fair-skinned, and who spoke in weird,
unintelligible sounds. Most seemed occupied at harvesting giant
vegetables. As they worked, they appeared to be studying an odd formula
consisting of heiroglyphic symbols.

Young Garcia's guest said he
had memorized this mysterious formula and would share it with Jose out
of gratitude for such fine hospitality. Working quickly, he sketched
the symbols on paper.

"Concentrate on these writings," he told
the youth, "and in time you will understand their meaning. It is a
magic formula, and by using it, you will feed the world."

Evening came, and as mysteriously as he had appeared out of nowhere, the stranger disappeared in the gathering darkness.

Jose
followed the instructions he had been given. Day and night he thought
of nothing but the symbols. After three sleepless nights, he knew it
was time to plant his seeds. Three months later, he harvested his first
crop of outsized onions, cabbages and greens. The legend of Jose
Carmen Garcia had begun and his fame has spread each year by word of
mouth.

Now, communicating through a friend named Oscar Arredondo,
Garcia says he wants the world to have his secret, even if his
government won't help.

Arredondo, a photographer, has compiled an
impressive record of Garcia's accomplishments in the form of pictures.
He says there really isn't anything surprising about the story of the
mysterious stranger and his message to Jose. The state of Guanajuato is
host to numerous visitors from outer space, he adds, and people report
UFO sightings almost every day.

And there are other interesting facts, Arrendondo asserts, including:o
Nicolas Infante, a farmer, heard the sound of rushing water when he
reached the 40-foot level while digging a well. Infante says the well
expels strong bursts of air, and absorbs air at night. He believes he
inadvertently hit a tunnel linking two of seven inactive volcanos which
may house inhabitants from other worlds.o Maria Carmen de Guisma swears she was the captive of extra-terrestrial beings in a space ship for three months.o
Dr. Manuel Garcia Rivera, a local physician, says he cared for the
woman caretaker of a hacienda near one of the craters. She told Rivera
she left her bed at 3 a.m. and saw a bright object on the ground. Four
beings, all glowing, disembarked and gathered samples of the earth. She
described the four as being of medium height.

These and other
incidents have been reported in a local newspaper and in a national
magazine, but to date have not generated the interest they appear to
warrant.

"Why isn't the world interested?" asks Arredondo. "If
this happened anywhere other than Mexico, world scientists and
agricultural experts would gather here."

To prove the validity of
Garcia's revelation, a challenge was issued. On a warm March day in
1978, two crops were harvested on a farm far from Guanajuato's volcanoes
in Tampico. The site had been selected by government agricultural
specialists, who inspected all seeds with great care and supervised the
planting three months prior to the harvest.

Two farmers had sown
identical 20-acre plots. One was a local man, the other Jose Carmen
Garcia, and every step of the growing process, from plowing until final
harvest, was under the watchful scrutiny of government agents.

The
seeds planted by both men were identical. No fertilizer was used. On
the final day - the day of harvest - government scales were trucked to
the farm. It was sundown before results could be tallied, but the
outcome was never in doubt.

Garcia's
onions, including stalks, stood six feet tall. His cabbages spread
their leaves over a seven foot circumference. His collard greens
boasted five-foot stalks, exactly like the greens he had grown in
Guanajuato for more than 30 years.

The officials climbed into
their trucks and disappeared into the fading sunlight. Only Raul
Moreno, a balding government employee who had believed in Jose from the
beginning, remained.

"We would normally keep these huge
vegetables for research," he said to Garcia, "or sell them for the
government. But since we took you from your farm, you may sell them
yourself and keep the money."

The next day, the poor families of
Tamaulipas added very large vegetables to their meager diets - given to
them free of charge by Jose Carmen Garcia, the uneducated farmer from
Guanajuato.

A disappointed but not embittered man, Garcia still
wonders why, having passed the test, the government has refused to
acknowledge what he has done.

The officials of the agriculture
department had promised a visit by President Jose Lopez Portillo and
official recognition, perhaps a news conference where the President
would bestow a medal on Jose, or possibly fly him to Mexico City to
proclaim his formula to the world.

If the President himself couldn't make it, the officials said, at least there would be a visit by the Minister of Agriculture.

However, there has been no visit by the President or his Minister of Agriculture, no news conference, nothing.

Asked
why he thought no official took him seriously, Jose scratched his head
for a moment. Finally he replied: "They took it personally."

Garcia
has no wish to keep the secret of this annual phenomenon to himself.
He believes vegetables like his could end hunger everywhere in the world
if grown in other countries. For three decades, he has attempted to
enlist the interest and support of Mexican governmental agencies, but
has encountered only disinterest or disbelief. Official have not been
able to deny the existence of Jose's outsized cabbages, onions and
greens, but they consider his story of how they are grown as far-fetched
and - in a manner of speaking - out of this world.By Bill Robinson for San Diego Home and Garden - date unknown